


something better

by torpidGilliver, veltzeh



Category: The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
Genre: Abandonment, Canon-typical bot enslavement, Dehumanization, Extreme Body Modification, Gen, Loss of Control, Non-consensual surgery, Passing mention of the primary function of ComfortUnits, elder death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-20 14:20:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30006204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torpidGilliver/pseuds/torpidGilliver, https://archiveofourown.org/users/veltzeh/pseuds/veltzeh
Summary: Her fingers flexed in mine, barely a twitch. "You deserved better," she said again. "Youfindsomething better, Avila."I was not Avila. It was not a legitimate order. But I felt a twinge from my governor module in spite of that."I will," I told her. And the buzz in my brain subsided.-Not every rogue construct got its start as a mass murderer. Some just wanted to do their jobs.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 17
Collections: Rogues and Rampancy





	something better

**Author's Note:**

> this started as a private exercise to become familiar with a character i pulled out of thin air to play a Rogues and Rampancy-themed oneshot, and it turned into A Whole Thing. Pilot belongs to veltzeh, who consulted on (read: wrote every word of) its dialogue.

"Thank you, Avila. You're always so good to me."

I was not Avila. Avila had not been a member of the household for more than four decades. It would have done no good to tell Silvaire that, however. She was already so delicate.

"I'm only returning the favor, dear," I replied, modulating my voice low and gentle in the best approximation of Avila's voice that my synthetic vocal cords could manage. Strictly speaking, this was an inappropriate way to talk to my client--it was too familiar, too unprofessional. But Silvaire required this fantasy to be comforted, so I was permitted to bend the rules a little.

It wouldn't be much longer.

The doctor largely ignored me, until my standing at Silvaire's bedside and holding her hand got in the way. At this stage, I was little better than equipment. I received only a dismissive hand wave to indicate that I should move. I stepped aside so the doctor could connect a line to the input already taped to Silvaire's wrist. This task could better have been accomplished by a MedSystem, but a MedSystem is impersonal and uncomfortable. It takes a lot of money and determination to die at home, under the personal care of a human doctor.

A human doctor and a ComfortUnit, I thought, and tried to permit myself my usual satisfaction. It didn't feel as good as it normally would. It was tinged with something I couldn't identify. I ran a diagnostic. My performance reliability was steady at 94%, and my systems were producing several hormones whose names I could see but couldn't pronounce. I would have to look them up later, to see what they were, so I could accurately include them in my error log.

One of the other household units pinged me from outside the door. I didn't want to leave Silvaire's bedside, even for a moment, but the architecture of the house actually required it. It was done in an ancient Terran style, and the doors did not open automatically. I stepped back from where I had been hovering behind the doctor and went to the door. The other unit was holding Silvaire's morning tea. She had no need of it, but preparing and delivering her morning tea at exactly this time every day had been one of its tasks for years, and no one had told it not to bother. Technically I had that authority, as its senior, but I didn't. There wasn't a lot that it could do for Silvaire now, as far gone as she was, and while it wasn't human and didn't feel the same way that humans do, it would still have been unhelpful for it not to have anything to do at all.

 _Query: client status?_ it asked as I took the tray from it.

 _Pulse: 43 BPM. Blood pressure: 91 over 48. Body temperature: 35.1 degrees Celsius._ The monitoring equipment projected these statistics into the feed in an extremely limited range. Once I opened the door, the unit would have been able to connect and read the numbers itself. But it wanted to hear them from me, so I told it. It tapped acknowledgement, but didn't turn to leave. I acknowledged it again, and it sent me a second client status query.

 _...She's not good,_ I told it. _I can't be more specific than that. I don't know more than that._

It acknowledged me again, as satisfied as it was going to get, and pulled the door closed for me. I took the tea tray to the low table in the seating area. The kettle would keep itself warm, in case we witnessed a miracle and some change came over Silvaire which permitted her to ingest her fluids orally. Behind me, the doctor suddenly barked, "Unit, get over here."

"Yes, doctor." I returned to Silvaire, standing on the side of the bed opposite the doctor. She didn't look at me. Her eyes were unfocused as she checked the more detailed, private readouts from the equipment. I took Silvaire's hand. She looked at me blearily.

"Avila," she whispered, so softly that I had to adjust my aural input. I squeezed her hand, increasing pressure by only three percent. She was so fragile.

"I'm here, dear," I said, and she smiled. It was hard to be sure, with her face sunken and wrinkled as it was, but she looked just a little rueful.

"Oh, Avila. I'm sorry. You deserved so much better than I've given you."

This was likely true, but my programming forbade me from agreeing with it. But there was a good reason for the divorce, and the decades of alimony. Several good reasons.

"You've been wonderful to me," I lied gently. Lying to clients is difficult to manage. You have to justify to yourself beyond a shadow of a doubt that it will be of comfort to them. It had become easier and easier to lie to Silvaire.

Her fingers flexed in mine, barely a twitch. "You deserved better," she said again. "You _find_ something better, Avila."

I was not Avila. (In fact, I knew from Silvaire's orders to keep tabs on all of her former partners that Avila was eighteen years dead, following an incident involving her pet deathspitter at her vacation home on RomAllynNavan. The investigation was still pending.) Silvaire was not speaking to me. It was not a legitimate order. But I felt a twinge from my governor module in spite of that.

"I will," I told her. And the buzz in my brain subsided.

That was the last thing that Silvaire ever said to me, and the last comfort I was able to offer her. Four minutes and sixteen seconds later she lost consciousness and the doctor ordered me from the room. In the absence of my client, I have some discretion as to whose orders I follow, but the doctor was a fairly obvious authority figure. I returned to my cubicle.

The other two units pinged me when I entered the ready room. I pinged back. Neither of them asked me for an update. They didn't need to.

There was a secondary question that none of us had dared to consider, but I couldn't shake it now, and I knew that they wouldn't be able to, either. None of us had a clue what was going to happen to us. Silvaire hadn't told us where we would be sent when her clientage ceased. Considering her obsession with the details of everything she owned, it seemed unlikely that she wouldn't have decided where we should go, but I couldn't shake the thought that I might be destined for the recycler. I tapped the other units, just in case they were thinking the same thing. I wanted to reassure them. They tapped back simultaneously.

There was nothing we could do. Our positions as household units afforded us a little more freedom than we probably would have had if we were working in a brothel, and I had never taken that for granted, but the decisions I was allowed to make were minor things. What clothing I wore on an average day, and how best to arrange the flowers in the east wing, and such. Anything more significant was up to Silvaire. My existence had never been open-ended.

There was nothing I could do. I set the parameters that would trigger a wakeup, and entered hibernation. In the 1.54 seconds between the deactivation of my processors and the loss of consciousness in my organic neural tissue, I had the ridiculous thought that I might not wake up again.

"I just don't see any _practicality_ to them."

"Of course you don't! All you see is profit margins and labor costs. But ComfortUnits are _so_ good for a household!"

"We already have bots. If you need more, I can get more. As many as you want."

"I don't need more _bots._ Bots are so... _empty._ ComfortUnits bring that human warmth to a home, but without the mess and expense of hiring human help."

"You can just say that you want to fuck them."

"Don't be crass! They do more than that!"

"Alright, fine. You can keep _one._ One should be more than enough for whatever you want it for."

"Two?"

_"One."_

"Hmph. I suppose I'll have to settle for the bare minimum from you. Just like always."

"Don't say that I never do anything for you. Just pick one of them, so I can tell the movers which two to haul away. They're all old, but all of the construct companies have buyback policies."

"Your mother would _roll_ if she saw what you were doing with the estate."

"My mother was a hoarder and a control freak, and she had terrible taste in decor. It's going to be a nightmare trying to find a buyer for this place, even considering the acreage. _Manual_ doors. Honestly."

My cubicle door slid open, and I was face to face with a human woman. She was young, or had enough money and vanity to convincingly wear youth on her face. She eyed me appraisingly, as though I was a piece of art and she couldn't decide whether or not I was attractive enough to rule worthy of her attention. I kept my expression neutral and did not follow her face with my eyes. She poked at my chest. I did not flinch.

"Get these removed," she muttered to herself. "Adjust the height, and the width of the shoulders. The face is androgynous enough it could go any way, but I like a bit of stubble." She raised her voice slightly. "You know you can program them so that their hair stays the _exact_ length you want it? And it doesn't fall out like human hair does, even though it's the same stuff. They're cleaner than humans."

"Fascinating," replied her companion, though he was clearly not fascinated. He was in the feed, focusing on something. I could feel him there, but I didn't pry. I knew him, but I pulled my old recordings to be certain. Vesalius, Silvaire's son. Age forty-seven. Secondary parent(s) unknown. (Not even Silvaire remembered who Vesalius' other parent had been. She'd had three partners in the timeframe leading up to his birth, and she didn't care to have any sort of account which gave someone else claim to him.) The last time I saw Vesalius was eight years ago, at a holiday event Silvaire had been hosting here. He'd had a different companion then, a tercera. I supposed that he has his mother's attitude towards romantic commitments. He seemed to have a similar attitude towards familial ones.

The woman moved away from me to check the next cubicle. The unit inside didn't react to her judgement, either, but it did signal disquiet to me though the feed. It heard the discussion, and the ruling that only one of us would be staying with the family. The third unit didn't say anything, but it acknowledged me when I tapped it. I wished I could offer it comfort, but comfort is for clients.

Vesalius exited the room without saying a word to his partner, but she didn't seem to care. She was on the last cubicle now, examining the third unit. When she gripped its chin to get a close look at its eyes, it cut them away and made eye contact with me. Its expression remained neutral, and it didn't say anything to me through the feed. It just looked at me. I memorized the details of its face, saving them to permanent storage. The woman slammed the cubicle door closed again.

"Honey!" she yelled out the open door. "I decided! Where's the foreman?" And she strode out of the room. 

I looked at the other unit, whose door she had also left open. I saved its image. I wondered if it did the same with me.

Simultaneously, we both ordered our doors to close and seal.

I expected to be deactivated, likely to be sold back to the manufacturer and recycled, but I was awake when my cubicle was loaded into the transport. I could hear discussion from other human voices, and I listened fervently as they talked about the sexbot that the missus wanted. I couldn't tell which of us they were indicating when they said that. One of the other units pinged me. It was some distance away, but no longer in the house. On a different transport, probably. I pinged back. I tried to ping the third unit, too, but got no response. I couldn't tell if it was with the second unit or with me.

I was left wondering my fate for seventeen and a half hours, as I was transported first terrestrially, then loaded into what must have been the cargo hold of a shuttle. I hadn't left the planet since I was activated. I didn't like the way that my various organic organs responded to the sudden lack of gravity. I don't have a stomach with which to be nauseated, but I think that I can more or less understand what humans mean when they talk about being spacesick.

When the cubicle door finally opened, I was in a stark room that smelled like disinfectant. Everything was shiny white plastic, from the floor to the walls to the six tables lined evenly in the middle of the room. I'd seen snippets of several fiction shows on Silvaire's display screen while I'd been working, and it looked the way that every modern building looks in every show I'd ever seen. It could be a MedCenter, but it could also be the home of someone who _really_ worried about germs. I played with the idea of the sort of person who would live in the latter to avoid considering why I'd be in the former. I stood beside the open cubicle and was wondering if a human might opt to laser off all of their body hair to prevent it shedding, when a door opened on the far wall and a human came in. They were walking briskly, and deep in their feed. I realized suddenly that I wasn't connected to the feed here; there was a restriction placed on access, and my governor prevented me from pushing at it. Before I had a chance to be unhappy about that, the human gestured to one of the tables.

"I don't have all day," they said, which I took to be an order to get onto the table. I approached it and was lifting my weight to push up onto the raised surface when the human glared at me. _"Clothes off,"_ they added with a snap. I was more confident about that order than I was about sitting on tables. I undressed and picked up my discarded clothes to fold them, but the human shook their head. "Leave them. Lie down." I got on the table again and laid flat on my back. This was very different from any of my previous work experience, but at least someone was telling me clearly what to do. The human wasn't making any expressions at me that I would normally associate with my being naked in front of them. They weren't looking at me at all; they were back in the feed. They clicked their tongue against their teeth disapprovingly.

"When she said it was an older model, I didn't think she meant that it predated the annexation of the Baryon Cluster. And the changes she wants are ridiculous! It would be cheaper to scrap this one and get a brand new unit custom built." They glanced down at me. I was staring at the ceiling, and watching them in my periphery vision. "Although it's a shame to reconfigure this one at all, really. Interesting face. But when you have that much money to blow, you can do what you want with your sexbots." They must have entered a command in the feed, because a domed cover slid out of one side of the table, sealing me inside. I was still processing what they said, about changing my face, when something connected to me through the feed and issued a hard shutdown command.

It was a difficult adjustment. There was pain, when I first came back online, but that wasn't the hard part. Once my performance reliability rose enough that I could disable my pain sensors, I could run diagnostics and investigate what exactly was done to me. It was a lot. The snappy human came back to let me out and to run tests of their own. Simple things, which weren't so simple now. I had to learn to walk again, for a start. My limbs were longer, and the proportions of my torso had been adjusted to match, so the muscle memories no longer corresponded to the necessary movements. I fell down a lot. It was also a surprising challenge getting my vocal cords under control. My voice was deeper now. It sounded a little grating, but after having me recite all of my diagnostic data three times through, the human nodded in approval. I guessed that was what I sounded like now.

Other parts of me had also been changed completely. You seem like you wouldn't enjoy hearing about that aspect of my function, though, so I won't go into detail about what was changed or the testing process. I'll just say that it was by far the strangest new thing.

I was happy about it. That I was reconfigured meant that I was the one Vesalius' partner decided to keep. I got to stay with the family.

I didn't think about the other two units.

The adjustment to my new configuration turned out to be easier than the adjustment to my new assignment, which was primarily waiting on Vesalius' partner. Vesalius was, strictly speaking, my actual client--I learned from the passive observation of conversations (the only way ComfortUnits are likely to pick up information that can't be delivered via an education module) that Silvaire had willed everything she had to him. He'd gotten rid of most of it. I felt a pang at the thought of all of Silvaire's beautiful things being recycled--her bedspreads with the floral patterns, the odd vase on the third floor landing that was shaped like some unidentifiable animal, all of the paintings in the ground floor lounge, the other ComfortUnits. Vesalius was right that Silvaire was a hoarder, but with every second that I spent in his stark stationside home, I missed the warmth of the natural wooden wall panels, and the unique doors which had to be opened with a knob.

Vesalius' partner was named Rhys, but I rarely heard anyone call her that. She preferred to be addressed simply as "miss." I'm not sure what sort of "human warmth" she had been referencing when she'd argued Vesalius into letting her keep me, because she didn't have me doing very many household chores. She primarily wanted me for sex, which I did appreciate, once I got used to how it felt with my new configuration. I would have liked it more if I didn't know that immediately following the activity, I would be banished to my cubicle. Silvaire had liked company for a while afterward, before she'd declined past the point of doing any sort of physical activity. Rhys didn't want to talk to me after sex, or any other time.

I didn't have time to become bitter about it. Rhys and Vesalius' partnership ended less than a year after I joined the household. I don't know whether she tried to take me during the settlement, but I doubt it. I think that Vesalius would have been happy to let her keep me. After she left, I spent every minute of every day in my cubicle.

I started querying Vesalius for instructions after sixty-seven days of zero contact. Every morning, when the feed alerted me that he was awake, I would send a simple message: _Good morning, Vesalius. Is there anything I can do for you today?_ He dismissed every message without actually responding. I didn't dare send more than one a day. I was worried that if I did, he might get annoyed enough to order me to stop, or just get rid of me. But then, what if he _did_ get rid of me? Was I really so sure that would be the death sentence I thought it was? Maybe if I was reconfigured again I would be sold to someone who actually needed my help.

When I received an order from the house system, I actually ran a diagnostic to make sure I wasn't glitching. 

The household had several small bots which performed the various tasks necessary to maintain things. Vesalius preferred the clearly inhuman bots to me, for reasons I couldn't fathom. Perhaps it had something to do with his preference for the stark and efficient. This worked smoothly inside the house, but from what I gathered, it could sometimes get complicated when it came to things like shopping. Most things could be delivered directly via drone, but certain objects were too fragile or too expensive to entrust to the (usually fairly cheap, and generally obvious to spot if you were, say, a human looking to commit felony mail theft) drones. These things were generally handled by one of the household's own bots. So I wasn't sure why the order to go and collect a custom-made piece of jewelry was coming through for me, instead of one of them.

I searched the feed for the name of the store and got my answer. Apparently, this place was so fancy that they boasted a highly illogical promise that shoppers would never see a bot in their stores--either working, or running errands. Huh.

Technically, my presence would violate this rule. But my outer appearance, aside from a few minor exceptions, is completely human at a glance. Provided that there were no other secret constructs in the store to pick me up on the feed, it would have been easy for me to enter, collect Vesalius' order, and get out before anyone recognized that my "augments" weren't standard issue for a human. Running errands was a far cry from anything resembling standard ComfortUnit use, but I was so relieved to finally be _useful_ that I didn't care.

Stepping out of the cubicle, then out of the closet I'd been crammed into, was like being activated for the first time. I had to pause for nearly a full minute, just to process it. I wasn't sure how I was supposed to just climb back inside when I was done, but I'd do it when it was time to. I told myself that if I did this quickly, made myself seem efficient enough, Vesalius might think to give me other tasks. 

My governor module buzzed a light threat, the way that it did when I told a lie to Silvaire that I _wanted_ to believe in, but didn't quite. It shouldn't have done that. All that time in the cubicle with no contact from Vesalius must have confused it about my clientage, or something. I blanked my mind and checked to see if any of my clothes were in the closet with me. 

I think I said already that I had never left the planet before Vesalius claimed me. I had seen glimpses of the station through the windows before, but nothing could prepare me for the way that it _moved._ As soon as I stepped out of the lift--I'd just figured out that Vesalius didn't actually live in a house, as I knew them, but an apartment which overlooked a meticulously maintained garden in the public space--I was swept away by a crowd. Before now, the largest number of humans I'd seen in one place was a a few dozen, at Silvaire's parties. I was a little taller than I used to be, so I could see over the tops of most of the humans' heads. I logged a couple hundred of them on my first visual pass. They jostled me, all in too much of a hurry to worry about bumping into one another. I allowed myself to be carried, and tried not to think too hard about how wonderful even the accidental touch of warm bodies was after months in the cubicle.

I hadn't had any reason to download a station map before this, but I did so now to check my destination. It wasn't far, just outside of the residential area in this wing of the station. I couldn't calculate how long it would take me to get there and back, because I couldn't predict how the crowd was moving. I was still being pushed in the correct direction, so I permitted myself to examine and admire my surroundings. It was more shiny white plastic out here, like Vesalius' house, like the room where I was reconfigured, but it felt more alive out here, where it was impossible to pretend that humans weren't around. I could see into a few unshielded windows in some of the residential buildings. The decor was different in each one. Sometimes there were people inside, moving around and living more quietly than the ones out here. Once or twice I saw children, for the first time in decades. Maybe it was the distance, and the barriers between myself and them, but they seemed a lot smaller than I remembered.

For the first time in my long life, I thought about what it would be like to have nowhere I had to be, and unlimited time to do as I pleased. I would have liked to explore, to investigate the station and to talk to the humans. I was used to dealing with only one human, but I thought it might be nice to find clientage with a family, maybe, a group of several individuals, maybe a group marriage with a lot of children who all needed attention. How many clients would I need to completely eliminate the possibility of ever being bored in a closet again? Five? Ten?

It was the proximity alert that shook me from my thoughts. I had arrived at my destination. The jeweler's wasn't as exciting as the station outside of it. It was just more plastic, more minimalism. I didn't want to go inside, but I had an order. My first order in so long. There were still some humans inside, I could see through the clear doors. I wouldn't be _alone_ inside. And I remembered the reason that it had to be me to make this trip, instead of one of the household bots. Everyone inside was a human, including the employees. I didn't need experience as a shopper to identify who was an employee--the humans who were working had ComfortUnit smiles on their faces. Their clothing also matched, but I noticed that second. I noticed the posture of a pair of shoppers who were talking to one employee, saw that they had partially turned their feet and shoulders away from him, trying to disengage. He was still trying to talk to them, apparently not recognizing the clear body language signals that they were done. I entered the store and approached, wearing my own smile. 

"Hello," I said, and startled myself. The modulation I'd selected was designated friendly-neutral, but it sounded all wrong. It took me nearly two seconds to remember that this was my new voice, and there was nothing wrong with it. It just didn't sound as good as my old voice had. The employee didn't know my old voice, but he didn't seem to like my new one, either. His smile became fixed as the shoppers slipped away in the opening I'd given them.

"Hello...." He paused, frowning at me, and his eyes went a little unfocused. He was checking the feed, and I realized belatedly that he was trying to verify my identity so he knew how to address me. Humans put markers in their feed addresses, but I wasn't permitted to do anything like that, so as far as he'd be able to see, I was fully disconnected from the feed. This perturbed him a little, but he fought valiantly to recover. "...sir," he concluded, a guess that was more wildly off the mark than he'd ever know, but for which I couldn't really blame him. "Is there something I can help you with?"

"I'm here to pick something up," I told him, speaking a little slower than I might normally, to give myself time to feel out the exchange. "An order. The name is Vesalius."

I'd meant that the name on the order was Vesalius, but the way his face lit up, I realized that he might have thought that I meant _my_ name was Vesalius. His manner changed completely. He went from polite and attentive, if a little stiff, to simpering. "Mister Vesalius, of course! I'll go and fetch it myself. Please, have a seat." He gestured to a few padded benches the exact color of the walls and floor. "Can I have anything sent out for you? Tea, coffee, wine?"

I kept my expression under control so he wouldn't see how distasteful the thought of trying to drink something was for me. "Uh. No. Thank you. I'll just... sit." He watched me for a few seconds as I sat. I tried to do so like I frequently sat on benches without accompanying a client. The bench was far more comfortable than it looked. When I'd settled, he ducked his head in what I supposed was meant to be a bow before hastening to the back of the store, and through a door with a feedmarker that designated it as being for store employees only.

While he was gone, I took more time to examine my surroundings again. The store _was_ minimalist, with nearly every piece of furniture being made of white plastic and transparent glass, but there was a long display case which stretched the length of the wall opposite the seating area, and it was full of color. I wanted to get up and examine the jewelry more closely, but "please have a seat," while in actuality just an invitation meant to offer me hospitality, apparently qualified as an order. I couldn't move, and could hardly even _consider_ moving without my governor buzzing. I settled for staring from across the room, and applying my magnification filter when I saw an employee open the case to get out a gaudy necklace to show to a shopper. 

"Here you are, sir!"

I was startled, but luckily that's not something that shows outwardly. The employee was back, holding a plain white box. It was small enough to fit in the palm of my hand, though he held it out to me with both of his. I took it. It was light enough that it might well have been empty. He beamed at me, and his smile dimmed when I lowered the box to my lap.

"Thank you..." I checked the feed. "...Hewitt." He was looking at me expectantly, and I knew that it was time for me to go. I had to figure out how to extricate myself from the "please have a seat" order without revealing that I had been obligated to obey it. I thought about my wording carefully. "...Is there anything else for me to do?"

"No sir!" His smile was back up to one hundred percent brightness. I'd thought at first glance that he could manage a smile as well as a ComfortUnit, but on inspection it fell apart. He was too strained. This was an unnatural way for a human to behave. "If you have some spare time, though, I'd be delighted to show you some pieces that might match that one. We just got this gorgeous--"

"No thank you, Hewitt," I cut him off before he managed to say something else that could be interpreted as an order and I got fried by my governor module for being unable to spend any money. I'd managed to unlock myself from the bench, and I rose so abruptly that he actually took a half step back. I offered him a bow, a _proper_ bow, and hurried out of the shop with the box clutched in my hand.

My primary task was, technically, completed. I was meant to retrieve the order from the shop. Secondarily, I was to return it to Vesalius. But the specific phrasing of the instruction still marked in my feed was _pick up order from shop._ It didn't actually _say_ anything about going back. The implication was clear, and that sort of technicality wouldn't get me terribly far, but I figured I could get away with going back on a slightly less direct route. 

My intention was to return, and I would. The governor didn't complain when I turned out of the shop in the opposite direction of my ultimate destination.

I kept the thought that I was on my way back in mind as I walked. The further I went, the more the life of the station revealed itself to me. I'd thought of the place where I'd started as being "the residential area," but it didn't take me long to realize that the whole station was residential. There were more businesses the further I went, and things got less shiny and white, but signs of dwelling stood out to me. I could see the way that some humans lingered in doorways, or made beelines for specific shops like they visited them regularly. What I'd considered the residential area was really just the _luxury_ residential area. The further I got from it, the more crowded and colorful things became. White plastic walls became dingy and gray and eventually transitioned to dull metal adorned periodically with crude slogans in messy paint. Rather than being divided from the public areas by walls and doors, some shops spilled out right into the walkway, and vendors shouted to get the crowd's attention. Food scents I couldn't hope to identify crowded me until I had to disable my sense of smell temporarily. The word was _noise,_ in every possible way.

I loved it. Every baffling second.

I let the crowd jostle me where it willed, until eventually it thinned out and I found myself in an area that lacked all of that life. The letdown was so intense that my performance reliability dropped by two points. I ran a diagnostic automatically, saw that my system was flush with hormones that it generally only produces during sex, but that they were already being purged. I dropped another point. I needed to take a second to collect myself, to make sure I didn't accidentally crash coming out of my reverie.

It was difficult to move away from the straggling humans who were still meandering on what was left of the main road, but I ducked around a corner where there was no one. I couldn't sit down without an order--not that there was anywhere to sit anyway--so I leaned against a wall and slowly turned my nose back up. No food smells, though I didn't know what I was smelling here, either. It was sort of dirty, I thought. I didn't hate it, though. It was a simpler, less aggressive smell, but still different than what I was used to.

While I allowed my circulatory system to reset itself, I looked to see where I was. If I were to continue down this side road, I'd enter what I guessed was some sort of industrial zone. There were a lot of huge crates, eight feet tall and fifteen feet long, which some bots were moving around like giant children playing with giant blocks. All of the crates were sealed while the lifters were moving them, but once they were placed wherever they were supposed to be, smaller bots--still huge compared to me, but significantly smaller than the lifters--were opening them on one end and moving smaller boxes out of them. My view was obscured, so I couldn't see where they were taking the smaller boxes. I had a silly thought, that my errand to pick up the tiny box that I was still clutching in my hand was hardly any different from what these huge bots were doing, except that they got to stay out here and continue working when they were done moving a box. 

I didn't make the conscious decision to enter their work area. I just suddenly realized that I had. That's probably why I was able to get away with it.

The bots ignored me as I skirted around them, careful not to get in their way. I wasn't sure why I had approached, but I wanted to watch them. There were three, working in tandem to unload one crate. The boxes were going onto the back of an unmanned transport, stacked meticulously together. I looked past the crates that hadn't been unloaded to where the lifters were bringing them from, and saw a gaping metal maw, like a cave. The lifters were bringing crates out of it at a steady rate. I realized that this was a loading bay, and the lifters were unloading a cargo ship.

_You are currently trespassing in a restricted zone. For your safety, please return to the designated area for pedestrian traffic._

I looked back and saw that one of the hauler bots was looming over me. It didn't have a face with which to express annoyance that I was blocking its route to the next shipment crate, but the polite message it broadcasted to my feed got the point across. I stepped out of the way, and it approached the crate, which it unlocked with a code key.

"Do you enjoy this?"

I wasn't sure why I spoke. Something came over me, and the words were out before I could stop them. The bot didn't react, because of course it didn't, but I couldn't stop myself. I tried again, trotting alongside the bot to keep up with it.

"Do you like it here?" I asked it, knowing that it was a nonsense question with an uncomprehending audience. I couldn't stop myself talking, though. The words were just falling out of my mouth. "You have work all the time. You're never bored. Or are you? Does constantly performing the same simple task settle into the same sort of monotony you would feel if you were in standby against a wall somewhere? Do you prefer this part of your assignment, opening the crates and getting the shipment out, or do you like the part where you stack the shipment onto transports more? Or is there something else that you do, too? Do you work with humans more directly sometimes? Do you like humans? Or do they just get in the way, like you said? Do they ever _talk_ to you?"

"Excuse me. That bot doesn’t understand what you’re asking."

This time, when I was startled, I _did_ jump, just a little. I stopped, letting the bot get away, and turned to see who had spoken.

Not a human. It looked human, but it was too still, its body language wrong. It took me a moment to process that it was another construct, frowning at me as though confused. It was larger than me, and when I pinged it, it didn't ping back right away. I didn't know what kind of unit it was. It looked at me, and after a delay, pinged back. Then it continued, "I… What you said sounds very complex. It causes me to think. One question causes many answers and it confuses me. You asked ’Do you like humans?’ and I only think ’yes and no’. How can that answer be? I don’t like that answer to exist but it does anyway."

It was an odd question, overly complicated from a bot. We aren't supposed to have that sort of complex, contradictory emotion about things. _Particularly_ when those things are humans. If it had been another household unit under my seniority, I would have requested its diagnostic data and submitted an error report. But something itched in me to answer its question. It wasn't my governor, buzzing me to offer comfort. Units don't offer each other comfort. But I _wanted_ to. 

I said, "Humans are a complicated subject. It's difficult to apply one statement to all of them, because all humans are different, and all humans are multifaceted. It's possible that you like humanity as a general rule, but certain parts of their structured society are uncomfortable for you. Or maybe you like an individual human, but that human does things sometimes that you dislike." 

My governor did actually buzz just a little now, I warning that I didn't understand. I gripped the box tightly in my left hand, so that the hard corners dug into my palm, and thought about how as soon as I was able to safely disengage from this exchange, I would hurry back to Vesalius and complete my task. The buzzing subsided. 

The other unit stared at me. If we were connected through the feed, the information exchange would be faster, less clunky. But the things that it was asking me weren't standard query codes that had simple responses. And I didn't want to stop talking to it.

"Um. I have even more answers about humans now. I didn’t think that would be the result. And I have even more questions."

It broke eye contact for a fraction of a second to give me a full visual pass, pointlessly reading my body language. "Is something causing you to be mildly distraught?" it asked. _What?_ I couldn't imagine how it got that impression. I ran a diagnostic, noted that my levels had plummeted, then spiked again a minute ago, when I started talking to it. That was weird. "If you like, we can talk in the ship’s maintenance access corridor. That way the hauler bots won’t be constantly going back and forth right next to us."

It was a request from another unit, not an order from a human with authority over me. But it had said 'we can.' I tried to internalize that. 

_We can,_ I told myself. _I can follow it, just for a minute. Just one last detour, and then straight back to Vesalius._

I opened my mouth to say yes, and the voice that came out wasn't mine, hadn't been since before I was reconfigured. "I'm very sorry," said my buffer. "I cannot comply with your instruction."

Well, that was that. I'd run out the end of my leash. I'd known I was getting close, but listening to the buffer cancel my plans for me, I dropped a percentage point. I signaled a negative to the other unit through the feed, as if it might need clarification of my 'no,' and raised the hand that was still clutching Vesalius' order. 

"...I have to complete my task now," I said, and hated how it sounded. My buffer voice had more inflection than my real voice did just now. I sounded flat. When concluding a conversation with a client, one would normally offer a verbal signal that the conversation has concluded politely. 'Goodbye' is the most common example, usually paired with the client's name. Between bots, my saying that I had to complete my task was more than sufficient. Between bots, the conversation shouldn't have occurred at all. I turned from the other unit and calculate the fastest route home. 

I'd be back in my closet in thirty-seven minutes.

"Wait, please." The brush of fingertips on my shoulder was so light that I barely felt it through my clothing. It triggered an error, and I froze in place. It had been months since anyone had touched me deliberately. I waited.

"I think… You can come if you want. My friend can help so that you’re not restricted."

I hadn't turned back around to look at the other unit. I continued not looking at it while I try to process what it had said. Every other word changed the message, scrambling it beyond comprehension. 'If you want' and 'my friend' and 'not restricted' were phrases that didn't apply to bots.

"If you don’t want to, walk away immediately."

An order, if one with a strange condition attached. And still not obligatory, coming from another unit. I didn't move. I wanted to understand what it was talking about. I wanted to know what it meant to not be restricted.

I felt another ping, not from the unit this time. I answered, but before I could zero in on the source something shoved its way past my wall and into my feedspace. It was large, a solid presence that took up too much processing space for me to run any sort of countermeasures. My performance reliability tanked, shorting out all of my sensory input. I couldn't see or hear anything, but I felt the familiar buzz. 

I wasn't sure what I was doing wrong. But clearly it was something punishment-worthy. I didn't have enough control to so much as brace myself for the shock.

_Sorry._

The thought didn't come from me. It wasn't a thought at all, really, so much as a feeling. A distracted, apologetic feeling that wasn't mine but had originated inside my head. And then, a second later, a diagnostic started without my triggering it. My performance reliability was at 71%, but slowly climbing as my auxiliary systems came back online. 

Touch came first--I felt cold metal under my hands and knees and extrapolated that I must have fallen. 

Audio next--the loading bay was a cacophony of banging and clanking and beeping.

Video. No video. Everything stayed black. I paused the overall diagnostic to focus on that. No error detected. Tentatively, I opened my eyes. Video input normal. Resume diagnostic.

An error code. Auxiliary module offline. I hadn't tested my motor skills yet, so I stayed on the ground while I investigated what was broken. 

I checked. Then I checked again. I halted my full diagnostic to run a defrag sequence, just to make sure there was nothing interfering with my perception.

My governor module was offline.

I poked at it tentatively, expecting it to buzz back at me, but there was nothing. It wasn't just offline, it was _trashed._ Whatever had hacked me hadn't been particularly gentle about it. It would need to be replaced. I would have to report the damage.

... _Would_ I have to report the damage?

Behind me, the other unit said, "Are you functioning properly?" 

I thought about the question. Not my answer to the question, but the way that it was asked. The other unit was nervous. I was worrying it. I wanted to reassure it, so I said, "I am functioning properly." The phrasing was weird, not what I would say to a human, but I wanted to meet the other unit where it was. I resumed my diagnostic, finished out my tests. Performance reliability leveled at 96%, and I stood up.

It hadn't moved, and was still staring at me with its fixed frown, but I noted the particulars of its expression now. It seemed to emote more like a human than a ComfortUnit would, with less control over negative expressions. I offered it my most reassuring smile. It smiled back. Then I dropped my smile a second later when I realized that my hands were empty. 

Losing Vesalius' order would have triggered the governor module, if it hadn't been burned beyond any functionality. I ran another targeted check on it, just to be certain, while I scanned the ground. The box hadn't gone far, just sliding across the floor when I'd fallen, and was lying open fifteen feet away. I turned my back on the other unit again to retrieve it and check the contents. It was a ring box, fitted to cushion a single piece of jewelry which was no longer in its place. 

My check came back: My governor module was inert. My warranty was twenty-six years out of date. And Vesalius' order was gone. I closed the box and turned back to the other unit.

"You said..." I spoke slowly, like I had in the shop. Every word of this was unscripted, and I no longer had any sort of guidance system to tell me whether I was crossing any boundaries. "You said that you had more questions. I... also have questions."

It smiled at me again. I didn't think that smiling came naturally to it, the way that it did for a ComfortUnit, but I liked seeing it smile. "Yes. I hope I or my friends can answer your questions. Um, wait. I think there is a protocol."

Protocol was something I knew. There were protocols for meeting new ComfortUnits, code exchanges and information syncs that lasted a few minutes at most and concluded with both units part of the same system, able to work in tandem as easily as if they have always done so. This other unit wasn't like me. We weren't meant to sync and work together. Everything had to be done manually, and manipulated to fit.

"You can call me Pilot," it said. "No, I mean SecUnit? Wait, no, I’m sure Pilot is better."

I flagged the term 'SecUnit' to search later, but I didn't start that now. I knew that if I did, I'd get derailed with more questions. Pilot opened its mouth, closed it again, then added, "I don't know why I said it like that." I wasn't sure either, though I thought I had a few ideas. It stared at me for a second, and I wondered if it wanted me to tell it what I thought, but then it asked, "What do you like to be called?"

If it had asked what I _was_ called, I wouldn't have hesitated. But I didn't know the answer to its question, as it had been phrased. I considered it, thought of all the things I had been called. There was nothing wrong with being called 'Unit,' really, but did I like it? I had been 'Vesalius' for a few minutes today. Had I liked that? Had I ever been called anything that I liked?

I wasn't sure about my answer. But I thought that it seemed right, if I was going to follow Pilot. I thought that if I did, it might take me away from here. It might show me something better.

"I am Avila."


End file.
